Belgium WWII Battle of the Bulge
n this Dec. 1944 file photo, German infantrymen pass by burning captured American vehicles during the drive into Allied lines on the Western Front during the Battle of the Bulge. (AP Photo, File)

By Raf Casert, Associated Press

Pvt. Arthur Jacobson was seeking cover in the snow behind a tank moving slowly through the wooded hills of Belgium’s Ardennes, German bullets whizzing by.

That was when he lost his best friend and bazooka team partner to sniper fire. “They couldn’t hit him, he shouted,” Jacobson said wistfully. “Those were his last words.”

The recollection of his worst day in the Battle of the Bulge still haunts him, three quarters of a century later during the first return of the 95-year-old to the battlefield.

The pristine-white rows of thousands of grave markers over the remains of U.S. soldiers in cemeteries on the former front line hark back to the days when Americans made the ultimate sacrifice for a cause across the ocean.

In this Jan. 6, 1945 file photo, American tanks wait on the snowy slopes in Bastogne, Belgium. (AP Photo, File)

The fighting in the bitterly cold winter of 1944 was unforgiving to the extreme.

What Jacobson didn’t know then was that he was part of the battle to contain Nazi Germany’s desperate last offensive that Adolf Hitler hoped would become his version of the Allies’ D-Day: A momentous thrust that would change the course of World War II by forcing U.S. and British troops to sue for peace, thus freeing Germany to focus on rapidly advancing Soviet armies in the east.

“WE WERE THERE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT”

The Battle of the Bulge “is arguably the greatest battle in American military history,” according to the U.S. army historical center. Such perspective came only later to Jacobson, who was barely 20 at the time.

“They really didn’t tell us anything,” he said . “The Germans had attacked through Belgium, and we were there to do something about it.”

Out of the blue at dawn on Dec. 16, 1944, over 200,000 German troops counter-attacked across the front line in Belgium and Luxembourg, smashing into battle-weary US soldiers positioned in terrain as foreign to them as it was familiar to the Germans.

Yet somehow, the Americans blunted the advance and started turning back the enemy for good, setting allied troops on a roll that would end the war in Europe less than five months later.

This battle gained fame not so much for the commanders’ tactics as for the resilience of small units hampered by poor communications that stood shoulder to shoulder to deny Hitler the quick breakthrough he desperately needed. Even though the Americans were often pushed back, they were able to delay the German advance in its crucial initial stages. The tipping point was to come later.

In this Jan. 13, 1945 file photo, and provided by the U.S. Army, American soldiers of the 347th U.S. Infantry wear heavy winter gear as they receive rations in La Roche, Belgium. (U.S. Army, via AP, File)

All weekend, a handful of returning veterans like Jacobson will be feted by an ever grateful local population for their bravery. Royalty, dignitaries and some government leaders will gather in Bastogne, Belgium and Hamm, Luxembourg, on Monday to remember the battle itself. “It will be a great day,”” said Belgian Vice Premier Koen Geens. Remembering both the German forces, driven on by Hitler’s hated SS troops, and the allied soldiers, he said: “”We are capable of the worst and of the best.””

“I DON’T NEED A NECKTIE”

Overall, deaths in the month-long battle are estimated in the five digits. The Americans suffered at least 80,000 casualties including more than 10,000 dead, while up to 12,000 were listed killed among some 100,000 German casualties.

In this Jan. 28, 1945 file photo, U.S. troops of the 82nd Airborne division travel on a snow-covered fire track in the woods as they move forward in the Ardennes region in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. On Monday, Dec. 16, 2019 veterans will mix with royalty and dignitaries there to mark perhaps the greatest battle in U.S. military history. (Army Signal Corp via AP, File)

Among the fallen was Albert W. Duffer, Jacobson’s Bazooka team partner, shot in the neck by a German sniper on Jan. 6, 1945. Last Tuesday Jacobson went to greet Duffer for the first time in 75 years — at the Henri Chapelle U.S. cemetery in the northern part of the battle zone, where 7,987 U.S. soldiers lie buried. At dusk, Jacobson watched the U.S. flag being lowered and was presented with it in recognition of his valor.

The Battle of the Bulge was one of the war’s least predictable campaigns. After D-Day and the draining Normandy drive, allied troops sweeping across the continent believed the worst was behind them.

In this Jan. 15, 1945 file photo, U.S. Brig. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe, left, and Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., right, are seated in Jeep after made an inspection tour of the 101st Airborne division. (AP Photo, File)

Paris had been liberated, Gen. George Patton was moving eastwards toward Germany, and Hitler had to keep an increasingly bleary eye on Stalin’s Soviet armies advancing on the Eastern Front.

“The thought was that Germany was on its knees and could no longer raise a big army,”said Mathieu Billa, director of the Bastogne War Museum.

Still, Hitler believed Germany could turn the tide, and centered on regaining the northern Belgian port of Antwerp with a push through the sparsely populated Ardennes.

The 120-mile (170 kilometer) dash seemed so fanciful that few of Hitler’s own generals believed in it, let alone the allied command. Allied intelligence heard something might be afoot, but even on the eve of the attack the U.S. VIII Corps daily note said that “There is nothing to report.”

In this Jan. 1945 file photo, American soldiers check for identification on the bodies of dead U.S. troops shot by German troops near Malmedy, Belgium during World War II’s Battle of the Bulge. (AP Photo, File)

For days to follow, the only reports would be bad for U.S. troops retreating amid word that SS troops were executing their prisoners — like at Malmedy, where 80 surrendered soldiers were murdered in a frozen field.

When Jacobson moved into the Ardennes, night temperatures outdoors dropped as low as -20 Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit). “”You had to dance around not to freeze to death,” he said. Daytime saw the constant fear of sniper fire.

Back home in the States, some were oblivious to the soldiers’ plight. “My family sent me a necktie,” Jacobson chuckled. “I sent a letter back: ‘I don’t need a necktie’.”

“NUTS!”

Soon though, the German effort pushed its limits as Antwerp remained well out of reach and troops ran out of ammunition, morale and, crucially, fuel. Even the weather turned against the Germans, as the skies finally cleared, allowing the all-powerful allied air force to pound the enemy.

Nowhere was that tipping point more visible than in the southern Ardennes town of Bastogne, where surrounded U.S. troops were cut off for days with little ammunition or food.

When Brig. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe of the 101st Airborne received a Dec. 22 ultimatum to surrender or face total destruction, he offered one of the most famous — and brief — replies in military history: “”Nuts.””

Four days later, Patton’s troops broke the encirclement. And so it went with the Battle of the Bulge too, with the U.S. troops gaining momentum after Christmas.

After the fighting ended on 28 January 1945, Allied forces invaded Germany, eventually leading to the Nazi surrender and the end of the war in Europe.

In this Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2019 photo, World War II and Battle of the Bulge veteran Arthur Jacobson, from Port St. Lucie, Florida, poses in front of a World War II vehicle at the Remember Museum 39-45 in Thimister-Clermont, Belgium. Veterans are heading back this weekend and on Monday, Dec. 16, 2019 when they will mix with royalty and dignitaries to mark perhaps the greatest battle in U.S. military history. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

Jacobson, who lives in Port St. Lucie, Florida, also entered Germany. But his war was ended by a March 2 mortar blast, which seriously injured his leg and killed three other soldiers.

After eight months of front-line horror, hospital offered him a kind of deliverance despite the pain.

“I used to wake up at night in the hospital. I’d dream about having to move out at night,” he said. “Orders would come down, ‘let’s move out to another position.’ And I’d wake up,” he said, “and look around and see where I was and then smile to myself and go back to sleep.”

134 COMMENTS

  1. They couldn’t have foreseen that they would be all but forgotten in just a few generations. Today, liberals embrace much of Hitler’s methodology, if not his ideology.

      • I am having trouble finding it, but there is a video of numerous german world war 2 survivors describing modern things like OSHA as being invented by Nazi’s. It’s all about oversight. I’m not even gonna go down this rabbit hole though, because the more you look, the more similarities you find. That’s not the scary part though, the scary part is people who escaped or were “adopted” by our governments and thrived on US Capitalism.

        • Operation Paperclip is good subject matter to brush up on. Germany basically handed us a space program on a gold platter.

      • And they’d beat the sense into idiots like you who think imperial Japan was some kind of victim. You know how I know you’re young? In my day you’d get smacked straight every time you opened your pro Axis mouth.

      • Not after what they endured; it’s a blessing most have not been here to see what all their sacrifice and effort has come to today.

    • Paul, if that is your real name, you are a fucking idiot to say such a thing. Shame on you for taking so sacred a thing as this article speaks to and crapping on it with partisan political bullshit.

      • Partisan political games are the one common thread that runs through *everything.* There was plenty of it going on while those young men were fighting in Europe, and it’s not much different from the partisan crap we’re arguing about to this day.

        Noting it or even engaging in it doesn’t diminish the bravery of those who stood up and fought when their names were called.

        It does, however, tend to erode trust in the institutions that are still sending young men to their deaths…for what? Does it make us safer if we refuse to connect the past to the present?

        • The post by “Paul” was not addressing any of those points. He told two massive lies. One that those who fought WW2 have been forgotten by the youth of today, that’s a lie. I have had the pleasure to work with many teens from of the last four decades. Sure, there are some who would not understand, but when you teach them properly they certainly do.

          The other thing is the idiotic claim that liberals of today embrace Hitler’s methods. A person cannot know anything of history and spout such a completely foolish and stupid thought.

        • Are you sure you don’t get even a tiny whiff of fascism from the progressive Democrats? Whether they’re copying Hitler’s playbook might be a different question, but they sure are enthusiastic about their circa 1938 Fascists vs. Communists political larping.

        • @ Ing says:
          December 16, 2019 at 15:02
          Are you sure you don’t get even a tiny whiff of fascism from the progressive Democrats? Whether they’re copying Hitler’s playbook might be a different question, but they sure are enthusiastic about their circa 1938 Fascists vs. Communists political larping.
          ————————–

          It is really very simple.

          Anyone who thinks that a major political party in the USA today is remotely Fascist, Nazi, or from the “Karl Marx Camp For Birthing Dictators When We Really Didn’t Mean To” is wrong. They may be ill informed, reading too much propaganda from the extremist end of their own side, or possibly they are just fucking shit for brains morons.

        • We’ll have to disagree on that, Enuf, at least where party leadership is concerned. It’s true that most people in this nation are well-intentioned, but that doesn’t matter. Whether the Democrats and the progressive billionaires and Marxist activists who currently pull the party’s strings are literally using the classic fascist playbook is irrelevant, because the fact is that they’re headed down that highway anyway. (I’m not exempting Republicans, either; the Republican party isn’t helping matters.)

        • Copy cat bitch. If your going to impersonate me know that I typically don’t sensor my crude language.

    • A few generations? Where have you been?

      Liberals embraced the methodology of Germany and Russia at least as early as 1958, 12 years after the war ended, and started pushing that shit into media and academia. And it was successful.

      The 10 Nov. 1967 issue of LIFE magazine fucking well commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution with a photospread of “Russian Youth” partying in bikinis and shit.

      • Yep. The “liberals” were all about their socialist utopia back then, and they haven’t changed.

        I’ve seen a lot of red-pillers lately saying McCarthy did nothing wrong; they’re wrong, of course (he was a fucking moron who went about everything in the wrong way) but he WAS right about the communists. He’s still right; their ideology is now a cancer embedded so deeply that it probably can’t be removed without killing the patient. And of course killing the patient is what it meant to do all along.

      • Um, y’all need to reach a bit further back for that; try 1912 for size. Woodrow Wilson was a socialist; he paved the way for FDR who was a major socialist too, both LONG dead before ’58. Even the McCarthy hearings against the very real incursion of communism into our society were in the very early ’50s.

    • I haven’t forgotten anything. My Uncle Willie followed General Patton across Europe and relieved Bastonge. Uncle Leland was at Pearl Harbor. Uncle Johnny worked at Oak Ridge, TN. Uncle Jeff was an anti-airaft gunner on the North Atlantic convoys. Dad was home working on the farm because polio cost him the use of his right leg when he was 8 y.o.a. Me? The first time I flew in an airplane it was a C-141. I stood in the door untila Black Hat slapped me on the ass and yelled. “Go!” Never so glad to do anything in my life. I was so air sick I was seriously afraid I was going to puke in the plane. Anyway, every American should do at least two years in the military.

      • I say bullshit because the Real enemy is the people that control the military! So don’t be a part of the problem! Yes I was in for 12 years 3 deployments and nothing we did over there was to protect the American people and if you believe so your either stupid or stupid!

        • At today’s percentage of people who serve you have a point sorta. Now imagine having 10 times that number who then come home and vote.

    • Fortunately, many of Americas patriotic Warriors are still alive today to tell us exactly how they feel about what’s going on in America in the here and now.

      Oh look, here’s a group of honored veterans willing to share their opinion:

      “Caesar Civitella, who killed more than a dozen Nazis in World War II and helped capture more than 3,800, has a message for the neo-Nazis who staged a deadly rally in Virginia over the weekend.
      “I would tell them that we have no use for Hitler-type philosophy in the U.S. and that they can either stop being a Nazi or people will give them bodily injury,” said Civitella, 93, of St. Petersburg.
      Civitella was reacting to a march Saturday in Charlottesville, Va., in which one of the neo-Nazis is accused of driving a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one and injuring 19. Additionally, two Virginia State Police officers were killed when their helicopter, which was monitoring the rally, crashed.

      During the war, Civitella served with the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA. On Aug. 29, 1944, he and a team of fellow OSS operators jumped into occupied France to help the French resistance. Working with the French Maquis, he helped capture nearly 4,000 Nazis, according to his official government biography.
      Seeing the neo-Nazis marching, he said, “was terrible.
      “I thought we eliminated that in World War II,” he said.
      Gerald “Bud” Berry, 96, of Clearwater, flew transport missions in Europe during the war and was in Etain, France, the day the Nazis surrendered on May 8, 1945.
      “I would be completely opposed to” neo-Nazis marching around waving swastikas and giving the stiff-armed Nazi salute, Berry said.

      When he was rolling across Europe with the 134th Infantry Regiment, better known as “The Nebraska Boys,” Harvey Lentz saw some of the worst of humanity in what the Nazis had done.
      In April, 1945, the retreating Germans had marched prisoners from a concentration camp, rounding up hundreds of them — those too tired or ill to continue — in a barn near the German town of Gardelegen.

      “I’m a little bit angry,” Lentz, 100 and living in Riverview, said of the Virginia rally. “They ought to find their own country, but everyone has their own opinion.”
      On Aug. 1, 1943, U.S. Army Air Corps Staff Sgt. Robert Rans was on a B-24 that took off on a mission to bomb the Nazi oil refineries at Ploesti, Romania.
      But before his plane could deliver its ordnance, it was shot down and Rans, now 96 and living in Tampa, was taken prisoner by the Nazis and held by the Romanians.
      “I think it’s stupid,” he said of the rally.
      “What the hell would you be doing supporting something like that,” he said. “Why would they want something like Hitler and the swastika idea?”
      To Rans, “there is no such thing as white supremacy as far as America is concerned. That is not our principles.”
      Like Civitella, the OSS operative, Rans has a message for neo-Nazis.
      “I would say … he should get the hell out of here if you don’t like to see a black person or Indian person or Eskimo or Jewish guy,” he said.”

      I could not have said it better, thank you gentlemen for telling it how it is.

      • Germany would have run out of money and collapsed. Socialism doesn’t work, whether national or international. Socialist economies can’t calculate, lack correct incentives and suffer all the problems of central planning.

        Or are you concerned now about Venezuela conquering south America?

        • Some people who smoke Greek and Aramaic thought basically the same thing about the Romans. How’d that work out for them?

          Socialism works just fine as long as it has prey to steal resources from. That’s how a Socialist Empire works, sucking an area dry and then moving on to steal from the next victim.

        • The Nazis were not socialists. They used the term in the name of their party and movement to fool certain factions of the German population to side with them.

          Fascism is an extreme corruption of right wing capitalism wrapped up in an intensely nationalist military expansion, myth building to create a national destiny, forcing industry to exist for the benefit of the State and picking some faction of society to focus everyone’s fears and hate upon.

        • “The Nazis were not socialists.”

          Makes sense to the TLDR crowd but some people actually understand that economic theory and political theory are two separate things.

          Which is why you can have a country that’s engaged in Democratic Socialism or one that’s engaged in Autocratic Socialism. You can have a Capitalist Monarchy, a Mercantilist Monarchy or a Socialist Monarchy. The US is, economically, fairly Capitalist while also being a Representative Democracy, commonly called a “Republic”.

          Germany was both Socialist in it’s economics and to some extent it’s politics, as is kinda dictated by Socialist theory where the state picks what is and what is not a public good, but was also a Dictatorship. The Nazis held some notions of Imperialism as well in terms of politics as well as some Mercantilist economic ideas that were tied to that imperialism.

          The only system that’s a really true and complete fusion of economic theory and politics is Communism which asserts that all economic activity is a “public good” and under the control the state.

        • strych9 says:
          December 15, 2019 at 21:36
          Germany was both Socialist in it’s economics and to some extent it’s politics
          ———————————–

          There is a very great difference between passing “Social Welfare” legislation and being any sort of a “Socialist State”, be it Marxist or along the modern northern European model of taxpayer funded large scale social services.

          The Social Legislation of Otto Von Bismarck was part of his Anti-Socialist plan, in terms of being anti-Marxist and anti-trade unionist.

          The Nazi era was not any sort of “socialist” beyond the laws they left in place (because Bismarck was a visionary and they worked) and the enormous lies spun by the Nazi propaganda machine.

        • “The Crimson Pirate” failed to acknowledge that the German military could not even mount an amphibious landing 100 miles across the English Channel.

        • Are we really comparing 1940s Germany, to…..Venezuela? The German economy began to suffer the effects of WW2 in 1943 but they were still doing better than a lot of its enemies. If they had won the war and continued to expand their territory, I doubt their economy would have collapsed.

        • @enuf:

          The Reich certainly went far further than the “Social Welfare” programs of the Wiemar Republic, which the Nazis expanded a bit.

          However, the Reich also nationalized a bunch of industries which they designated, in the modern parlance, as “public goods”. Parts of this were for the war effort and parts of it were part of Hitler’s employment initiative which started before Hitler’s annexation of Austria in 1938. This kind of designation and intervention is a hallmark of Socialist economic policy. It was also an outgrowth of a political battle that started in the Wiemar Republic between those in the USPD that thought a Soviet style command economy would get the country out of trouble and the SPD which favored a parliamentary style government and far more moderate economic policies. In many ways Hitler split the baby on this argument.

          Again, if you look at the Reich overall you find that politically it was basically a Dictatorship but also an empire. Economically it was a rather socialist enterprise where the Nazis thought “public goods” existed but with strains of mercantilism, that is parts of the economy run by the government and used specifically to contribute to the glory of the Empire, running through it. Added to this was a strain of nationalist based racism that had been in the German mind for decades as evidenced by the Herero and Nama genocide starting in 1904, but which has it’s roots in pseudoscience, imperialistic ambitions, socialist thought and just plain overt racism that go back decades further. Hitler skillfully exploited these feelings that were just below the surface to create a cult-like Party.

          Where the Nazis saw no particular benefit to nationalization they left things alone, much like a modern Democratic Socialist nation does but with the difference that there was no public debate as to what was and what was not to be nationalized.

          To simply apply a singular label to something as complicated as the Reich is whistling past the graveyard. But it’s what people do for a variety of reasons ranging from personal feelings to academic politics to just being stupid and not comprehending nuance.

          American feelings towards “Nazis” in particular make the politics of discussing this extremely difficult, though arguably not as difficult as modern German politics. And, truthfully, what I’m saying here is still a super-simplified version of things.

          Regardless, to say that the Nazis “were not socialist” is to paint with far, far too broad a brush and to ignore the complicated interplay between politics and economics that has taken place in every country ever created. The Nazis were, very obviously, socialist in certain regards. They were also imperialistic, racist, dictatorial, mercantilist and a number of other political and economic adjectives too. That doesn’t mean that every socialist is a nazi any more than every capitalist is a republican or every mercantilist is a monarchist.

        • strych9 says:
          December 16, 2019 at 01:16
          @enuf:
          The Reich certainly went far further than the “Social Welfare” programs of the Wiemar Republic, which the Nazis expanded a bit.
          … and much more revisionist history …
          —————————–

          It is truly stunning and a bit worrying that the propaganda spun by Hitler’s regime still holds sway with people today. The very definitions of words and entire political and economic schools of thought and action continue to be mangled into a morass of lies. Even the murders ordered by Hitler of his own supporters who spoke a bit too much in public about the benefits of Socialism have no impact upon those deluded by 75 to 90 year old propaganda.

        • S9. enuf is a rabid anti Trump socialist. Naturally he wants to separate hitler from the rest of socialism. So he struggles at every turn to do so. Remember, his brand of socialism will get it right this time.

          I cannot be the only person that sees the similarities between antifa and the brown shirts? Maybe even the ss? They both wore a deaths head emblem. In the case of the antifa they wear a death mask to hide their ID.

          And from the pictures I’ve seen they appear to be white kids. All marching to the same drum. And they claim to be socialists.

        • “ I cannot be the only person that sees the similarities between antifa and the brown shirts? Maybe even the ss?“

          Fascinating.

          Let me ask a couple questions, regarding this comparison you’re making.

          The brown shirts revered Adolf Hitler, and marched with banners bearing his name and picture. What leader does antifa worship and carry his likeness at protests?

          The brown shirts were whipped into a frenzy against the Jews, and beat and attacked Jewish citizens without withouThe brown shirts were whipped into a frenzy against the Jews, and beat and attacked Jewish citizens without without restraint. The brown shirts had government laws that institutionalized their racial hatred, and often attacked Jewish businesses and organized operations supported by the police.

          Which ethnic group does antifa vilify, and what homes and businesses of this ethnic group have the antifa attacked and destroyed?

        • miner. antifa are a bunch of white guys in masks attacking folks for expressing their free speech rights. They don’t hesitate to use violence to suppress those they oppose.

          Fascinating part is how you selectively approve of one group of fascists but not another. Fascinating indeed. Racism is bad regardless of who is doing it. But racism is not the only mark of a fascists, or their supporters. You are evidently a supporter of fascism.

        • The only difference that matters between communism and fascism: People under fascist governments generally have enough food to eat.

      • The generals and the guys at Krüpp all told Hitler it would take two more years for all to be ready. Leaping too soon likely led to the loss in Battle of Britain. (and Russia for that matter) Germany may well have gotten The Bomb first as well, though they seemed to have trouble getting fissile material.

  2. Empty German gas tanks and generally poor logistics (caused by German mismanagement and allied bombing) stopped Hitler’s last advance.

    • The story of the Allied victory in the Battle of the Bulge is a complex one. German failings were met by Allied initiative, courage, an d resourcefulness. General Eisenhower was quick to move in reinforcements and order attacks on the German flanks. General Patton had already planned for the need to pivot 3rd Army, push well north to attack a likely German offensive. American soldiers in small groups, knowing little or nothing at all about the greater picture, made enormous efforts to deny the Germans vital fuel supplies. Entire fuel depots were picked and moved back or destroyed entirely.

      The list of reasons why the good guys beat those miserable evil bastards cannot be stuffed into a few sentences or even pages. You need to read up to understand the enormity of what was accomplished.

      You need to respect the men and women who accomplished it.

      • True, it makes me think of Waterloo in a way. A better spy/scout for the Brits and allies as well as more troops , the rain and mud slowing down Napoleon’s artillery…

  3. To all of you who feel the need to SJW a history lesson:

    We already know there were numerous reasons why the Nazi’s failed. Be thankful allies were there to assist. The end.

    • Very well stated. A lot of idiots these days get their history from reddit and Wikipedia though. This has contributed greatly to the current online trend that outright insults both the US and UK to the point of racist like hate for the nations, glorifies Stalin, and gives imperial Japan a pass. Personally I believe humanity is losing a lot with the passing of the WW2 generation. Further, I believe Europe has forgotten the most, and Europe will indeed see yet another holocaust like event towards the Jews. If you pay attention to European politics, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

      • Yeah I figured you chime in here with some anti American rhetoric. First of all, acknowledging the holocaust is not some kind of nod to Stalinism. Stalin was just as evil as Hitler. Don’t see how you get that from my statement. Furthermore, we every right to embargo Japan all we wanted. It was our oil and we can do with it as we please. We could declare selling to no one if we wanted to. Japan was not some kind of victim and to think of them as one is a measure of your retardation.

      • If facts and history is anti-American then so be it. We provoked people into attacking us and then lied to our own people, same **** different day.

      • Tell you what, go and build yourself a time machine and travel back to the 1930’s. Japanese militarists, German Nazis, Russian Stalinists could all do with yet another ignorant sphincter licker. Plenty of places you could find real happiness.

      • Arc you know nothing of history. You’ve been taught propaganda. Your the one who’s been lied to. I’ve been learning about The history From the men who lived it. To include one German soldier from the war. So you can eat me with your new wave Nazism boy.

      • If I built a time machine, I would make sure we never got into WW1 to begin with. The war would fizzle out in short order and WW2 would have never happened.

      • to ARC

        Its refreshing to find someone willing to tell the truth and then be attacked by all the ignorant flag waving Hill Jacks on this forum.

        I would like to mention one thing you forgot. And that was we attacked Japan first. Our mercenary Air Force was killing Japanese Military Personnel in China long before Pear Harbor. It was no secret we were selling P40 fighter planes to the Chines and training them and also having our own pilots fly them as well. If that was not an unofficial declaration of war against Japan then nothing else would be either.

        I would like to say that the P40 fighter plane was a good deal better than the British Hurricane but the P40 never got the credit it deserved despite the constant updates and improvements to it during the war. I you have never read the book “God is my Co-pilot” or seen the movie make sure you do.

        I would recommend reading the book about Pearl Harbor called “Day of Deceit” by Stinnett a retired Navy Admiral. Its fascinating reading as he peeks into U.S. archives , many of which are still censored or partially censored so he simply went to the people still alive that wrote these secret government memo’s to get at the truth of the Pearl Harbor attack. He was criticized for misquoting some people but this does not mean you should not read the book and consider the evidence. Its no accident the bastards in the U.S. and Britain have locked up much of their WWII records for 100 years to save embarrassment to many of the people in the government during WWII.

      • to Arc

        I see you mentioned WWI. If you want to read a book about WWI that will make your blood boil, read the book “Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918 World War I and Its Violent Climax” Paperback – October 11, 2005

        This book details what a murderous uncaring asshole General Perishing was. He deliberately wrote a vague general order leaving it up to local military commanders if they wanted to go on attacking even though the exact minute of the ending of the war was announced to both sides. The Germans being a practical people thought the attacking American had gone completely out of their minds. The shame of it was those nut case commanders that made their men attack and get themselves killed was all for absolutely nothing as the small amount of territory gained was given back to the Germans at the end of the war.

        The parents of the deceased U.S. soldiers then sued Perishing in U.S. court as a mass murderer but he was a popular General and the corrupt courts told the parents to go fk themselves. Too bad at least one of the grieving fathers did not find Perishing and have a close up final confrontation with the bastard.

      • vlad. As usual you are lying. The first combat mission of the AVG was 20 december 1941. 13 days after the japanese attack on Pearl.

        And why not sell aircraft to China and assist them in their war? Japan attacked China.

      • You flag wavers ever wonder why all the new ships were out on maneuvers the day the Japs attacked Pearl, while all the old WW1 rust buckets the navy wanted to replace were sitting there waiting for them?

        Just because someone understands that the US government were rat bastards in the past doesn’t mean they support the other sides. This is the same US government that everyone here complains about, doesn’t trust, and knows is corrupt and full of evil people and is coming for our guns.

        Do you really think it wasn’t the same shit back then?

      • I’ve added the books to my reading list. I should also add that we did more or less the same thing to Korea, attacking them here and there, then scream and howl for war when they strike back.

        If I had to put a date at the absolute start of this, it would be the war of 1812, which accomplished absolutely nothing except getting thousands of people killed, wasted oodles of money, and getting our white house burned to the ground (1814). Jefferson’s war, when the government figured out it could raise taxes and restrict freedom. Every war that followed afterwards only got worse.

      • Both you fuck boys are brainwashed. Clean the Liberal revisionist history semen out of your Ears You get off reddit and learn some real history.

      • to JWM

        “””””””””””””””””As usual you are lying. The first combat mission of the AVG was 20 december 1941. 13 days after the japanese attack on Pearl.

        And why not sell aircraft to China and assist them in their war? Japan attacked China.””””””””””””””””'”””””””””””””””””

        Look JW you half wit Your out of your league. Quoting Wikipedia only shows you know nothing about the entire story of”Claire Chennault”. He was in China as early as 1937 and was personally training pilots and flying older designed attack aircraft and he was personally also shooting down Japanese planes. He had a few Americans there helping him long before they were know officially as the AVG and long before he went back to the U.S. to get the 300 volunteers that would become officially known as the AVG. The first group of personal was done in secret and were there in China unofficially and was small in number but were Americans.

        And you idiot when the U.S took sides with China and supplied them with planes that in and of itself was an act of war against Japan and that also was before Pearl Harbor.

        Try again Bomber Brain. Your out of your league. Your making a fool of yourself.

      • “And why not sell aircraft to China and assist them in their war? Japan attacked China.”

        Not sold, JWM, officially ‘borrowed’.

        The ‘Lend-Lease act of 1941’, used initially to arm Briton, was expanded to other Allies as the scale of the conflict grew. China benefited when (at the time) retired Col. Claire Chennault was called out of retirement to equip and field a foreign air force. Similar today how civilian contractors like Halliburton get contracts to work in places like Afghanistan and Iraqi.

        In much the same way that ‘Blackwater’ used to recruit retired Navy SEALS to provide VIP protection services in the Mideast ‘sandbox’, Chennault recruited retired Army Air Corps pilots with pay far higher then they could get in civilian life to fly those combat missions from China.

        The rest was history, the ‘American Volunteer Group’ (AVG), an instant Air Force, just add American mercenaries…

      • “You flag wavers ever wonder why all the new ships were out on maneuvers the day the Japs attacked Pearl, while all the old WW1 rust buckets the navy wanted to replace were sitting there waiting for them?”

        I read a legitimate book about Pearl Harbor, and never believed nonsense like you are trying pass.

      • Arc,

        We cut off Japan from its oil sources and made absurd and unreasonable demands of them to forfeit all of the land they conquered in Endo-China, naturally, they had only two options.

        Japan was guilty of atrocities, both in terms of conquering other nations as well as raping and murdering after conquering those other nations. Period. Their actions showed that they were evil, plain and simple.

        Whether or not it was righteous for the United States to attempt to intervene is a totally different topic of discussion.

    • Karma will catch up to the snotty little brat and her handlers. Shes forfeiting her education right now for what exactly? When shes not a teenage brat anymore, just what will she do for a living? Teach women studies at Harvard?

      • Hopefully, in 10-20 years she’ll end up sporting two permanent black eyes as a Muslim concubine.
        I’ll still be a beer-drinking, pork-eating *sshole, too.

      • In keeping with the whole knotted up twisted side tracked and tangled comment section here. No one can focus, everything has to be rehashed everytime.

  4. The Bulge (16Dec44 – 25Jan45) gets all the press, but the real battle was The Hürtgen Forest, which lasted five months. The Hürtgen battle raged from Sep 44 to Feb 45. The German Ardennes invasion was launched, in part, from the Hürtgen.

    One of the most brutal aspects of the allied victory in the Bulge was that the Germans were all but surrounded toward the end. Rather than “bag the lot” in a pincer movement, Eisenhower and his generals decided to push the Germans back, yard-by-yard in an attack all along the Bulge. The result was not utter destruction of the German army, but the escape of same into Germany, to fight another day. That decision has been analyzed extensively, but the result was how many unnecessary US and allied casualties, and prolongation of the war?

    • There’s a lot of debate surrounding Eisenhower’s strategy of a long, broad, slow moving front. I get the arguments on both sides. Eisenhower was wary of a repeat of operation market garden at a point in the war where victory was only a matter of time. The counter argument is a more blitzkrieg like attack led by Patton both during and after the bulge could’ve won the war sooner. Neither are correct or wrong in my opinion. A slow moving front May have meant longer war, but a blitz to Berlin would’ve been quite costly. Remember the high price the soviets paid taking Berlin. Ike also wasn’t to interested in Berlin with how close the soviets were and was more interested in the industrialized part of southern Germany.

      • Just have not seen a really good argument for not making 200,000 Germans prisoners, then massing for the drive into Germany. Also do not understand Market Garden, either…the entire offensive restricted to essentially a two lane road.

        • Montgomery was an idiot. He spent the day painting and fking off the day of Market Garden. He never attacked unless he had overwhelming force but that even failed him during the Market Garden fiasco. He was warned about the roads but ignored the advice of his top advisers due to his arrogance. Montgomery was considered a joke by Eisenhower who often simply sent in the mad dog General Patton who like General Grant did not give a fk how many of his troops were slaughtered but at least Patton had more intelligence and got the job done but he was hated by his men. My Dad fondly remembers some of his buddies yelling at Patton calling him “Blood and Guts” which Patton new meant his guts and their blood. That is a story the flag wavers never like to admit to or tell.

          I might ad the George C. Scott move about Patton is worth seeing. Scott was more believable as Patton than Patton himself was because Patton had a high squeaky voice that made him sound ridiculous when he spoke. This was one of the few movies that both the Far Right and the Far Left loved at the same time. The Far Right liked the movie because they thought it glorified Patton and the Far Left liked it because they thought it showed what an asshole and war monger Patton was. There was truth on both sides of the debate. A lot of truth.

        • Your dad is a gunsmith in Ohio. He’s not old enough to have been with buddies in Pattons 3rd army. You took that line straight out of the movie.

          You are a pathological liar.

          • Really should include “@….” when you are using an unrelated Reply function.

            It’s all good, though; figured it out.

        • “quote——————–Your dad is a gunsmith in Ohio. He’s not old enough to have been with buddies in Pattons 3rd army. You took that line straight out of the movie.————quote

          Brother you must be high on drugs tonight. People who knew my dad are laughing their ass off at your nut case post. You really are a trip.

        • You’re a natural liar, vlad. I’ve seen your facebook and know your real name. Your dad is a gunsmith and you are a drop out from Kent State.

          You lie in every comment. Every one.

  5. One of my friends was an infantryman who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He was 20 years old, his regiment was in full retreat and he and a sergeant were in a jeep deep in the Ardennes, and trying to stay out of the way of the advancing Germans. At dusk they pulled into a forest clearing. It was snowing heavily and almost dark but they could dimly see the outline of a tank on the other side of the clearing. It was a German Mk IV. My friend described watching the turret slowly turn toward them. And then it fired, the 75mm shell passing just over their heads. They quickly reversed into the tree line and, fortunately, the tank didn’t fire again. I’ve often thought about my friend’s account. The tank must have been very close when they encountered it, virtually a point-blank range, which means it would have been difficult for the gunner to miss. And yet he did miss. I like to think that tank gunner missed on purpose.

    • By that time in the war, that tank gunner was probably a scared 16 year old who had a week worth of actual training. He probably did miss on purpose.

      • I think the tankers were often East Front veterans, fresh from fighting the Russians. Even that late in the war the young kids were for obvious reason generally not in armor. Infantry certainly but tanks were expensive pieces of equipment. Regardless of who was in that tank, decades after the war my friend vividly remembered a moment where he should have been killed but wasn’t.

        • It is very possible those tankers were vets – SS probably got priority on equipment. The manpower shortage was indeed critical, though, which is why that last offensive went west rather than being swallowed up by space in the east.

  6. My father fought in the 28th Division, 110 Infantry at both the Huertgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge. He passed away in 1998. As long as I live, my sons live and my grandsons live we will never forget.

  7. There are a number of good histories of the Battle of the Bulge. One of the best was written by Peter Elstrob, a British tanker who was there. His book is long out of print but should be available in most libraries. It well enough written that you’ll be tempted to stay up all night reading it. Honest.

  8. I remember my Economics teacher in 1964 who was captured at the Battle of the Bulge during the war told us that they later found out that the U.S. Generals had known of the coming German push and deliberately put green troops in the way of the attack. This was even before the secrets of the cipher machines were known to the world decades later. At any rate after a bunch of U.S. troops got slaughtered the plan did work as it drew the Germans into a trap.

    My economics teacher also told us he often saw G.I.’s murder German soldiers surrendering and coming out with their hands up. He said the Canadians were far worse though.

    The Russians were noted for shooting captured SS troops on sight because they were considered far to fanatical and dangerous to take prisoner but what is not well known is the U.S. often did the same.

    My Economics Teacher had a German bomb come down on top of him and when he came too after being knocked out for a moment reached up and felt the bomb crater right next to his head which was caved in at his forehead. He later had to have a steel plate put in his head. The strange part of the story was that he was cared for while in recovery by two Russian Slave Women that the Germans had captured. Of course I guess its not a strange story at all as the Germans enslaved people in every country they captured and enslaved many male and female Russian soldiers they captured early in the war. Later on both sides quit taking prisoners unless they were in very large groups. .

    Once a year my Economics Teacher would bring in his war trophies which included a real German Luger with its original holster and all us high school kids got to handle it. For the guys that was big thrill. I often wonder what happened to that Luger after he died as he was a life long Bachelor. Today the faculty would go out of their fking minds if a teacher brought in a German Luger to let kids handle. Back then Lugers were often sold for between $30 to $50 dollars. They were considered obsolete military junk. My dad sold his FN High Power with two matching clips and holster for $30 bucks (1963). I about went out of my mind when that happened. My Dad went nuts several years later (1968) when I paid $104. for a brand New Browning High Power. He thought I had lost my mind. I always wanted an original High Power and it was almost 50 years later when I found one with two matching mags and holster made in 1950 and the price was $1,200 bucks. I am glad the old man did not live to see me do that it would have killed him.

    My History Teacher brought in an old ancient Stephens Crack shot before hunting season to teach kids how to walk with a gun safely through a field. He was stern teacher but we liked him and he seldom had to discipline anyone. We knew he was not fking around when he taught and would not put up with any nonsense. Again today bringing a rifle into class would get a teacher fired even if it was to save lives. Its not the same American we live in today anymore. I think mores the pity.

    My Dad, and my high school friends Dad who I found out later was friends with my Dad and my Uncle were all in the Battle of the Bugle. My uncle was trapped there and remembers how cold they were in one of the worst winters Europe had had in decades. He gave me a Hitler Youth knife but the guard was cracked off at the end. He also brought back 2 parade helmets, a WWII and a WWI. I still have the youth dagger all these years later along with a German Iron Cross my Dad picked up. He brought back two Luftwaffe daggers, A Nazi High Power, a 1906 FN. 25 acp and a Styer Hann 9mm. My dad brought back 8 pistols altogether including a Luger but alas sold all of them despite my howls of protest . He was not a gun person so I could not find out what the other two pistols he sold were. The last two pistols I will mention were 1911 .45’s but they were told if they were caught trying to bring them back it was prison time so a large group of men went to the side of the ship and threw them into the ocean.

    Decades later all of them were bitter about the war. I often heard the statement at reunions that “It was not worth it and they would never do it again and that war was just the rich getting richer and the workingman getting his brains blown out”. People do not like being used as bait and as guinea pigs even if it is to win a war because when you are classed as expendable its no fun getting shot at. Nobility is for fake talking heads on Pearl Harbor day not for real soldiers who always got fked by both the enemy and their own military. Of course the real Pearl Harbor story is another long story of sacrificing our people to get us into a war. See the book “Day of Deceit” by Robert Stinnett a retired Naval Admiral or the book about Vietnam “Kill anything that moves” by Nick Turse, another shocker of a book. If you think the William Calley atrocity was shocking, you ain’t seen nothing until you read this horrific book.

      • None of what he says is true. He’s way to young to have been in High School in 64. I’ve been to his facebook. He made up that whole long winded story to ‘prove’ that the war was unjust and evil Americans sacrifice their own for gain.

        He is a pathological liar.

        • to jmw

          You really are a trip. Not so long ago you made a fool of yourself claiming I never owned a weapon but after awhile even your dim witted brain realized that no one could have posted the vast amount material and experience about guns that I have posted here. You finally quit that rant and moved on to claiming I was a young man. Again even a half wit would have realized long ago no young man would have even known half of what I posted about events that happened some 50 plus years ago in relation to guns and my experience with them or the everyday life I spoke about long ago. Again no young man would have known of this but that is beyond your ability to fathom. Quite making an ignorant fool of yourself most of which you scream about is being laughed at by even reasonably intelligent people

        • Vlad, again, you lie. Period, full stop. I know. You know and if You hadn’t whined to DZ about it I would be using your real name in every comment.

    • “told us that they later found out that the U.S. Generals had known of the coming German push and deliberately put green troops in the way of the attack.”

      That late in the war, green ‘Replacement Depot’ troops were *everywhere* there was combat.

      Even the celebrated ‘Band of Brothers’ Easy Company troops of the 101ist Airborne (who were in the Siege of Bastogne battle) had plenty of replacements in their ranks. You remember them, they entered war on the 6th of June on Normandy beach…

  9. The Ardennes Offensive was never as close run thing as history has portrayed. The key to the German advance was Elsenborn Ridge which was never taken by the Wehrmacht.
    Failure to take this key crossroads forced their advance to find alternate routes over narrow tracks and less strategic towns. Their deepest penetrations ran out of fuel and abandoned their vehicles to hike back to German lines.
    Further, Bastogne sparked the imagination of folks back home because it was the home of the press corps.
    Elsenborn had no members of the press and didn’t get the same press as Bastogne.

    Hitlers’ failure to take Elsenborn on the first day doomed the offensive from the start.

  10. My dad rest his soul, fought along side Gen Patton in the Argonne Forest, he said Patton always rode a tank with his upper body sticking up out of the hatch to servale the approach, the big red 1 was his outfit, then long story short he got wounded really bad & then the Army found out he was only 17yrs old , he then got sent home to Boston with 33 bullet holes in his body. A big story here , maybe some day I’ll get a chance to tell it…. got proof of everything I’ve said also… he’s my personal HERO…

  11. nice…..

    My Gramdpa was at the Battle, he was in the 10th armd Div combat command B that held Bastogne as the 101st came up to reinforce the armd div. then moved on from there liberating a sub camp of Dachau that was shown in the series of HBO “band of brothers’….I think Patton barfed at seeing that mess. He never talked much about it all

    Still have many of his photos on file he took during the fighting and his M1 Carbine and all his ‘liberated’ cameras, plus some of his carry bags and duffel bag with markings
    did sell off his captured SA dagger made in 1938 for a rather nice return!

  12. As a teenager in the 1970s I was part of a war gaming group who use to meet at a local public library on friday nights. Before computers war games were played on paper hexagon sheets sometimes eight feet long or even longer.

    “Wacht am Rhein” (1977) was one such game. The game pieces were thin cardboard 1/2 square. I believe there were over 1200 pieces in that squad level game. Simulations Publications, Inc. or SPI for short made some of the most detailed historical war games. They were great. (smile)

    These kinds of games teach geography, weapons performance, and history to children willing to spend weeks playing them. For “watch on the Rhine” we played at a friends house where the game could be set up and left in place for at least a month.

    Playing this game several times demonstrated to me that the allies were very lucky. Technology really helped the americans. The VT artillery fuse was an american “wonder weapon”.

    In the snow and over cast fog, the Battle of the Bulge was fought and won at the squad level. I learned that from a game. Before I read the book.
    The allies exploited mistakes the germans made. The initiative of the individual american soldier is a weapon that is very difficult to defeat. Special thanks to the 761st tank and the 969th Field Artillery.

    We beat Superman. At least that is what the germans called themselves in 1933.

  13. For those of you that like War movies here is an almost unknown gem of a war movie starring Paul Muni called “Counter Attack”.

    Its about two Russian Soldiers , Paul Muni and a Russian Woman soldier. They go into a house that just happens to have a bunch of Germans in it but suddenly a German Artillery shell comes down and the house collapses on them and they are trapped in the basement with the Germans with no way out and no light except one candle.

    Muni had disarmed the Germans and had a U.S. made Tommy Gun. Muni must remain wake for several days as the Germans have found out how a Russian counter attack will be made and they try and attack him every time the candle goes out.

    Muni lights up the basement with tommy gun fire until his comrade female solider can relight the candle. Later she is stabbed and unable to keep helping him and he must try and stay awake all by himself and hope the Russian attack comes soon before he falls asleep and the Germans finish him off. All in all a great suspenseful movie to see and today largely forgotten and unknown.

  14. I think that because McAuliffe was tired, overwork with decisions upon decisions to make that when somebody handed him that note he loudly exclaimed “NUTS” meaning “what the Sam Hill is this, something else I have to deal with” and fortunately got misinterpreted.

  15. The “nuts” mentioned by McAuliffe in his terse response to the German surrender demand were not the kind that grow on trees.

  16. My Grandfather fought under Patton. He described him as a hard but fair man. He had respect for the General. Grandpa was a PFC, BAR Infantryman. He didn’t speak much about the war until I joined, and he had advice to give that served me well for my time in service.

    As for the armchair quarterbacking and the hindsight of the battles, those are great for lessons learned to teach. But they are inconsequential to the facts that were had by people at the moments they need to make decisions in these battles. They didn’t hindsight, and often did not have up to date intelligence about the whole picture. Many had to base decisions on the reality of the moment in their battle space. Judge them on that and not what you think you would have done in hindsight.

  17. Europeans had more gun rights in 1939 than they do today. Even the Germans had more firearm freedom then than now.

  18. My wife’s stepfather was in the AO of the “Bulge” in December 1944. He was among the newbie replacements sent up to the front in October of ’44 who had zero, zip, no combat experience whatsoever.

    When asked, he would confirm only that he was in the Battle of the Bulge. He would never, ever say anything more. He didn’t give his unit, his military specialty, rank, nothing. All he would confirm is that he went to a southern military school, and then enlisted in the US Army in ’43. That was all he’d say about joining the Army.

    When he passed, we looked up his military record. The information we could find showed his company was accounted for by Christmas of ’44 as consisting of only 12 men still able to function, including him. The rest were either (mostly) KIA/missing/captured, with a smaller group wounded. His company was rolled into another company in January, pulled rearwards and never mentioned again in military records that we found.

    Today, in the fullness of hindsight (in a current time where the Germans have seen fit to put a communist at the head of their government, who is even now outsourcing the third German invasion of Europe), our policy of benevolence towards the Germans at the end of WWII has proven misplaced. We should have taken a much harder line with them, especially after Malmedy. Our policy should have been to slaughter as many Germans, uniformed and civilian, as possible, and lay waste to the country’s architecture, infrastructure and economy. The entire SS should have been executed in public as a matter of policy, whenever and where ever they were found.

    We should have treated the Germans as the Germans treated others, and made sure that their entire population knew they were being repaid in kind for how they conducted themselves.

    • Although I confess that in my less educated past I also had dark thoughts about the German people. I came to realize through the study of history that the majority of people in Germany and in Japan were shocked after the war to hear and see through films the atrocities the leaders of both countries committed. And ditto for the American people as well as we are as guilty as the Japanese and Germans were because during the Vietnam War we became the new 20th Century Nazi’s who murdered as high as 3 million civilians and it was done on purpose because of such murderous scum as General Ewell known as “The Butcher of the Delta”. After the Calley massacre at Mai lia the shocked American people also revolted so do not blame an entire race of people blame their evil leaders, Hitler, Tojo, Nixon, Johnson etc. They were all murdering bastards.

  19. Small men, in a large war. Insignificant it seemed. As we and history look back as always, small insignificant people are GIANTS. Bigger than life itself, Hero’s everyone. It still amazes me how so much greatness comes from the few. GOD BLESS YOU ALL.

  20. My answer is to the title…….Our military leaders had guts back then, we lost them with the U.N. and it started with Korea until today. Public and world opinion is not as important as our leadership and our young men (and women) s lives. If you won’t allow us to fight to win then bring them home ! NOT ASHAMED !

  21. By the way, such procedures contribute to a good research of humankind. Adolf Hitler, for instance, who did really contentious stuff, what led him, and so on. We don’t understand many things yet. You can see for yourself, that there is in fact only a general idea, for example, I have read articles and research from scientists and look what i found , but I think we can get a lot better understanding using the very same artificial intelligence.

  22. American Soldiers”

    A soldier in the army,
    Will do the best he can
    Seems all the battles that he’s in,
    Are fought in foreign lands.
    They don’t ask where they’re go’in,
    Or how long the job will take,
    They use their wits and weapons,
    To correct someone’s mistake.
    The life in the foxhole,
    Is not a pleasant one,
    But he has to stay there,
    Until the job is done.
    And on the field of battle,
    They fall one by one,
    They are not only soldiers,
    They are somebody’s sons. 🙁

    By Bernard Doyle McLean, March 1991,
    Printed by the Princeton Daily Clarion, Princeton, Indiana.

    That was from then Sergeant B. D. “Willie” McLean. A war time and post war friend to General Anthony C. “Tony” McAuliffe commanding the surrounded 101st and the AA 82nd Air Borne Division’s valiant and successful stand defending the many crossroads into Bastogne, Belgium in December 1944.

    Willie was his arms length away from his war time and post war friend when Brigadier General Anthony “Tony” McAuliffe replied “Bull Shit!”. Willie said, “Nobody ever believes me when I tell that! “Nuts!” was a better choice for The Stars and Stripes military paper and the national press back home.

    Now you have the rest of the story Paul Harvey or Ernie Pyle did not know to tell very publicly!

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  24. The matchmaking new bride web site was not the post I’d hoped for.

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